Somehow still going leftism from who knows where. || "We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass-merchandizing, advertising, politics conducted as a branch of advertising, the pre-empting of any original response to experience by the television screen. We live inside an enormous novel. It is now less and less necessary for the writer to invent the fictional content of his novel. The fiction is already there. The writer's task is to invent the reality." -- JG Ballard.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

All in the name.

Ever pondered how different things might have been if Hitler's name had been something else? Would he still have electrified the beer halls in the same way as Adolf Schicklgruber, as his father was originally known? And what for that matter if rather than Churchill, the right man at the right time had been called Reginald Boggis?

No, of course you haven't, because you're not an idiot. All the same, names are important, especially for terrorist groups. Boko Haram for instance, which isn't the group's actual title but is usually translated as western education is sinful/forbidden. More literally though, it's books are forbidden. The only book Boko Haram wants to suggest is of any worth is the Qu'ran, with the hadiths alongside, which tells you more about them than anything else. Al-Qaida as you probably know translates as The Base, and in the beginning was a literal database of former mujahideen who had fought in Afghanistan.

Now there's Islamic State, and the name itself is enough to cause journalists to go weak at the knees and governments with ulterior motives to send in the bombers. The group calling itself Islamic State in Libya has about as much connection with the self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria as I would if I started flying a black flag from my roof and shouted Allah akbar every time I did anything. All they've done is declared allegiance to everyone's favourite messianic loon Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, but such is the fear the Islamic State name carries that it's the moniker itself which demands attention as much as their murder of 21 Coptic Christians.

We haven't after all shown the slightest interest in the Libyan civil war, despite the fact that it was Nato's fabulous intervention against Gaddafi that precipitated today's insecurity. David Cameron's visit to Benghazi ought to be seen as his "mission accomplished" moment, except Cameron and Nato had sort of learned the lesson of Iraq: impose regime change, then get out as soon as. Just like in Iraq, where the Ba'ath party effectively was the state, in Libya Gaddafi played a similar role. And just like in Iraq, with the overthrow of a secular, vicious dictator, into the void have come various groups, some nationalist, some of a more moderate Islamist tinge, others like Ansar al-Sharia and our pals IS of the takfiri Wahhabi bent, and they're all fighting for power and influence. The key difference is that unlike in Iraq, where the country has become riven due to the schism between Sunni and Shia, with the Kurds and smaller numbers of Yazidis and Christians thrown in for good measure, in Libya the vast majority of the population is Sunni. Where others see Iraq as a lost cause as a state ruled from Baghdad, this should, according to them, make it easier to reach a political solution.

Only compared to Syria, Libya doesn't exactly strike most as being of the greatest urgency. It's up there with Ukraine: it's not pleasant that cities are being made uninhabitable and thousands have died, but it rather palls in consideration with the however many hundreds of thousands killed in Syria and Islamic State declaring Sykes-Picot to be history. With Islamic State duly rearing their ugly heads on the coast of Libya, deciding this time to film their latest atrocity on a beach, no surprises that both Italy and Egypt have decreed something must be done.

Italy's unease and anger is more than understandable: they along with Greece and Malta have become the new frontline of this latest wave of migration from Africa, with the rest of the European Union refusing to stump up the cash necessary to fund the operation to both save lives and turn boats around. As for Egypt, beyond the anger and grief over the slaughter of Copts themselves looking for a better life, bombing an Islamic State grouplet is the kind of action designed to calm any remaining nerves the West might have over the military coup and subsequent massacres of Muslim Brotherhood supporters. Facing an insurgency in the Sinai, the last thing Egypt wants is the another hostile force operating in a safe haven next door. And even if it doesn't become anything more than a militia with a negligible amount of fighters seeking infamy by proxy through Islamic State, the very name and its professed allegiance means Egypt is hardly going to be criticised for striking against it.

Unfortunately for both Egypt and Italy, although whether the latter truly favours a reintervention in Libya isn't as yet clear, getting the team back together which did so much to cause this mess in the first place isn't going to happen. Only France might be so inclined, and considering the French attitude to arming the rebels in Libya was to drop them from a great height and worry about the groups picking them up later, they have more to answer for than most. Ourselves and the Americans however aren't interested, as we're both far too busy in Iraq and Syria, and for David Cameron there's the whole election thing to worry about. Not even blood-curdling warnings from the Egyptians of Islamic State jihadis masquerading as refugees turning up on the shores of the Mediterranean ready to strike will change minds, although they do make for great quotes and clips in news reports.

Much as it feels a little churlish to criticise the media for the unbelievably one-dimensional and often plain ignorant coverage of Islamic State popping up in Libya, considering no one has expressed the slightest interest in the country since the death of Gaddafi, to give the impression IS is metastasing across the wider Arab world is simply wrong. Nor is it just the usual suspects failing to provide context or make clear worrying about IS in Libya is even less a good use of time than panicking about Ebola was; the BBC have been at the forefront, and the Graun hasn't been much better. Egypt is relying on just such a lack of knowledge for its own purposes, and its conflation of all varieties of Islamism as posing the same threat is being used to stifle the last remaining voices of dissent in the country. The last thing Libya needs is further outside intervention; instead, a summit of the kind that could have worked in Syria if all sides had wanted it to is what ought to happen next. Such things are boring sadly, especially when compared to a death cult's latest reprehensible crime.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Interventionists: the biters bit?

The more you consider recent Western foreign policy, the more it doesn't make even the slightest sense. Or rather, it doesn't so long as you consider it from the viewpoint that within reason, we try and encourage the spread of freedom and human rights, a notion that has become fashionable over the past couple of decades. One of the favourite arguments of interventionists when it came to Libya in response to critics saying why now and why not somewhere else was just because we can't act everywhere doesn't mean we shouldn't take action when we can.

The obvious answer is because we could. Libya's military apparatus was in a far worse state than Syria's; we had significant business interests in the country whereas China and Russia had relatively few; Gaddafi had little in the way of actual support, relying on a hardcore of supporters backed up with hired mercenaries; and the military themselves it seems felt it was doable. Despite seeming a success though, even if what actually happened went far beyond what UNSCR 1973 authorised, it also exposed a number of problems. First, the Americans were not pleased at what they saw as having to do the heavy lifting when it had been the UK and France who had pushed for action with the most vigour. Fatally for the Syrians perhaps, second is both Russia and China felt fooled by what NATO decided the resolution authorised, despite it calling for a ceasefire and negotiations. While Russia would always have been more inclined to oppose action in Syria considering her long term ties with the Assad family, it emboldened opposition to any repeat.

My opinion remains that had we really wanted to intervene against Assad, we would have done. By any measure there was a far stronger case for doing so as the civil war began in earnest, as compared to Libya when the action was meant to prevent a massacre, the Assad regime had already carried out mass killings. It would have been far more difficult to be sure, and there has never been anything approaching a serious plan set out for how such an intervention would begin, but that has never stopped us in the past. Indeed, as we came so close to doing something, although it was explained precisely what, there must have been contingencies in place. The decision instead seems to have been made to do just enough not to invite the accusation of indifference while at the same time keeping up a false level of rhetoric: sort of arming the sort of moderates, and not a lot more. Our real attitude was summed up by how the government had to be all but humiliated into allowing a tiny number of Syrian refugees into the country, the impossible aim of reducing immigration to the tens of thousands being far more important to the Tories than relieving incredible human suffering.

It might be this is the best approach: Russia is isolated, China abstaining on the vote at the UN at the weekend, and the economy looks likely to continue to suffer. The threat of far more stringent sanctions could well deter Putin from any repeat in the restive east, and the last thing we need at this point is an overreaction that would threaten the (slight) Eurozone recovery. It does however stick in the craw: far from this being an example of what happens when we are weak, it's rather a perfect example of what happens when you abuse the sound in principle but unworkable in practice notion of responsibility to protect. The west has spent the 2000s intervening wherever it feels like, most egregiously in Iraq, but has also had no qualms about violating national sovereignty across the entire globe under the pretext of rubbing out terrorists wherever they're to be found. The US/UK actively encouraged Israel to decimate the south of Lebanon in 2006, and now have the temerity to complain when Russia stages an all but entirely bloodless annexation of a highly sympathetic area of a neighbouring state. We also aren't averse to staging pointless referendums when it has come to both Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands: in the case of the 2002 plebiscite in the former, 98.48% rejected the notion of sharing sovereignty with Spain, an absurdly high percentage that obviously didn't come close to reflecting real opinion.

One suspects that in a genuinely free vote not held under such intimidation and where the status quo had been offered an an option, the result would have been far closer. A poll last month suggested only 41% wanted union with Russia, but whether the number of respondents from Crimea was statistically significant enough to make that an accurate barometer of opinion is open to question. When it comes down to it, we're right to impose sanctions, and right to denounce what is a flagrant breach of international law by an aggressor state made to look foolish by the people of a nation who want to take their own path. Our politicians though would do well not to make promises they cannot keep, while they should also take a long look at themselves and think about whether the positions they have taken over the past few years have encouraged others to also see the treaties of the 20th century as there to be broken without consequences. Our own interventionists however tend to see no such shades of grey.

Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Keeping secrets secret.

There's a scene in the film Liar Liar (this will almost certainly be the only time I quote from a Jim Carrey film other than the Truman Show or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind approvingly) in which Carrey's character, compelled to tell the truth after a wish made by his son, screams down the phone at a long-term client once again seeking his legal advice that he should "STOP BREAKING THE LAW, ASSHOLE".

An obvious solution to this unpleasantness would be, you would have thought, to not get involved in illegal conspiracies where "terrorist suspects" are flown to various black sites around the world, or as the rendition programme has since ceased, to not actively conspire with authoritarian states over the detention of opposition figures, regardless of the business interests involved. This doesn't mean not working with states that we regard as having poor records on human rights whatsoever, when such relationships are vital to protecting our own citizens and interests, rather it means just not helping them with the things that our own courts would reject.

As Henry Porter (as an aside, it's worth noting the lack of outrage from the vast majority of those who condemned ZaNuLiarBore for their constant attacks on civil liberties this time round) and Richard Norton-Taylor have pointed out, these arguments might carry more weight if we didn't know all too well this part of the Justice and Security Bill only exists because of lobbying from the intelligence agencies. The fact is that the courts were getting far too close to the truth: that despite all of the claims to the contrary, the security services are still involved in practices that are either incompatible with basic human rights or which rather than making us more safe, do the exact opposite. While the Guantanamo detainees all decided to settle, as has al-Saadi since, it's more than possible that someone would emerge who had suffered either at their hands or indirectly who wouldn't, and would take the case all the way. The seven paragraphs were enough to get ministers hyperventilating; some of the material contained in the documentation of the war on terror could be enough to alter the perception of the security services for a generation.

The row over the control principle was always secondary to this. The Americans may well have been angered by the release of the seven paragraphs, but they were only ever released by our courts because the American courts had already let even more damning evidence on the treatment of Binyam Mohamed out into the public domain. In any case, as David Davis pointed out during the debate, the Americans are more than willing to let intelligence out when it shows them in a good light, and to say their own levels of security were previously wanting considering Bradley Manning and Wikileaks is an understatement. While it's certainly true that SIAC does not always find in the government's favour, as demonstrated in how Abu Qatada has been granted bail and in Ekaterina Zatuliveter's successful appeal against deportation as a spy, unless there are absolutely exceptional reasons justice must be open, and seen to be open. Closed material procedures were designed to protect the blushes of the security services, and the amendments to the legislation haven't done anything to change this.

It certainly brings into perspective the anger expressed by Blair at how he couldn't deport anyone designated as a "terrorist suspect" to wherever the hell he felt like; no doubt aware of how swiftly those opposed to a new dictatorial ally had been delivered into their grasp, it must have smarted that the likes of Abu Qatada and others kept winning their legal battles. It also remains to be seen whether charges will be brought against anyone involved in these two cases: the Gibson inquiry into rendition was abandoned as a consequence, ostensibly for the reason that the investigation by the Met would have further delayed the hearing of evidence. I'm certainly not holding my breath on that score.

What I didn't know was that Libya's supposed WMD programme Gaddafi willing gave up was almost as non-existent as Iraq's, or the full facts of the sequence of events that led to Libya being targeted by Reagan in 1986. Something Curtis doesn't dwell on is that in spite of documents emerging implicating our good selves in the rendition of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, nothing has been produced since the fall of Gaddafi to prove beyond all doubt that Libya was responsible for the downing of Flight 103, or indeed to cast more light on the murder of Yvonne Fletcher. Notably, Gaddafi's director of military intelligence was sent back to Libya rather than any of the other states or courts where he's wanted, while Moussa Koussa was allowed to skip off to Qatar, never to be seen again.

And there's a clip of Vanessa Redgrave calling for a revolution. What more do you want?

Of rather more importance ought to be the similar crapola Dave served up before the general assembly. This time last year the splendid NATO intervention in Libya was still going on, with the civilians in Beni Walid and Sirtre being "protected" through bombing raids and Gaddafi yet to be pulled out of his sewer and sodomised to death, so naturally we heard of how wonderful bombing countries with copious natural resources was. 12 months on and the best that can be said about Libya is that the militia allegedly responsible for the murder of the American ambassador Chris Stevens was flushed out of Benghazi with just 9 deaths in the process reported. According to Cameron, this popular uprising was "inspiring", although strangely he failed to make mention of the deaths or how it reflects rather badly on the Libyan security services that it was armed individuals rather than themselves who carried the burden of doing so.

Mostly though Cameron dedicated his speech to setting up straw men arguments about the Arab spring and then knocking them down. Anyone would have thought that as a country we had supported the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt from the very beginning, instead of all but ignoring the overthrow of Ben Ali and then only dumping Mubarak when his fall from power seemed inevitable, such was Cameron's fervour for what a wonderful thing the downfall of these authoritarian regimes had been. We don't though support the complete democratisation of the Middle East, as that would obviously be against our interests. Search for a mention of Bahrain in Cameron's speech and you'll find there isn't one, despite Cameron trying to claim that Somalia's election of a new president is somehow related to the protests that began last year. That his election was by, err, other MPs rather than by the people themselves also went curiously unexplained.

The fact is that for decades, too many were prepared to tolerate
dictators like Gaddafi and Assad on the basis that they would both keep
their people safe at home and promote stability in the region and the
wider world. In fact, neither was true. Not only were these dictators
repressing their people, ruling by control not by consent, plundering
the national wealth and denying people their basic rights and freedoms,
they were funding terrorism overseas as well.

Now, can you possibly think of a country that fits this description exactly? No, not Iran, as only relatively recently has that country lost all vestiges of being democratic. It's the House of Saud's ruledown to a T. Except, Cameron can't possibly mean the Saudis, as we seem more aligned with them than ever. Just as in the 80s when the Americans joined forces with the Saudis to fund the mujahideen in Afghanistan, so now we're promoting Sunni dominance of the region as a bulwark against Iran. That this means equipping jihadis in Syria to battle against Assad, hijacking what had been a non-sectarian uprising, is just one of the compromises we have to make if we're going to ensure that stability remains. It also means we'll have to turn a blind eye to the shooting dead of protesters in restive regions of SA, just as we said next to nothing about the crushing of the protests in Bahrain.

Quite how Cameron had the nerve to stand up and say the UN was stained by the blood of children killed in Syria is though something else. No one can deny that the Assad regime bears full responsibility for the situation in the country as it stands, but to completely ignore the atrocities also being committed by the opposition forces we're supporting is an outrage. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad, embedded with the FSA, reported this week on how a 16-year-old who said the wrong thing to the rebels was brutally tortured in front of him; if they're prepared to do that to someone who merely spoke out of turn, and in front of a Guardian journalist, then how they are treating those they're supposedly fighting for when there are no witnesses around? The blocking of resolutions on Syria by China and Russia is partially down to how they were misled on Libya, when the imposition of a no fly zone was used by NATO as the authorisation for regime change. The blame ought to be shared out equally, not just pinned on those who've dared to point out our hypocrisies.

Only then in this bizarro world of Cameron's imagining could it be Iran that's set "on dragging the region in to wider conflict". The Saudi and Qatari funding of the FSA seems designed to weaken Iran, which in turn is undermining the stability of Lebanon. Add in how Israeli politicians have been agitating for an attack on the country now for the last couple of years, with Benjamin Netanyahu today reaching new heights of fantasy, describing a nuclear armed Iran as comparable to a nuclear armed al-Qaida, and it's clear the exact opposite is the case. Iran is trying to consolidate its position in the region while our allies and ourselves are doing everything we can to push it back.

At least on Letterman Cameron only embarrassed himself. Let loose on the world stage, delivering speeches in which he claims to be a liberal Conservative rather than a neo-con, he comes across as positively dangerous. An independent British foreign policy seems as far away as ever.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Too early to tell.

I was going to start this post off by quoting Zhou Enlai, who when asked about the effects of the French revolution purportedly said that it was too soon to say. Only, as such witticisms often are, it all seems to have been a misunderstanding based on translation. Enlai wasn't referring to the revolution of 1789, but to the student rising of May '68, some three years previous. Still a fair while to not be able to draw a judgement, but not quite as indicative of supposed Chinese reflection on history as has been implied.

Libya, despite or rather in spite of the NATO intervention is in an even worse state. Elections that were due to be held yesterday were postponed earlier in the month until July the 9th, supposedly on the grounds of "logistical and technical" reasons, although more likely is the fact that vast swathes of the country are still in the control of local militias rather than that of the Transitional National Council. Gone almost unreported is that four International Criminal Court officials continue to be held by the militia in Zintan, on the ludicrous grounds that Australian lawyer Melinda Taylor was passing "coded messages" to Saif al-Islam Gaddafi. Far from condemning the seizure, Australian foreign minister Bob Carr seems ready to "apologise" about the mission in an attempt to free the four, who are stuck as much in the power struggle between Tripoli and the militias as they are due to disagreement with the ICC over where the trials of former regime figures should be held (can you imagine the protests if Syrian forces had taken into custody some of the UN monitors?). The battle at Tripoli airport only underlined how volatile the country remains, while Benghazi and Misrata, the two cities most associated with the revolution look as though they could go their own way, having already held local elections.

Certain patterns have emerged. As throughout history, those who first agitate for and succeed in overthrowing their rulers often find their revolution stolen from them or otherwise subverted, as in France (see above), Russia in 1917 with the February revolution being overtaken by the Bolshevik uprising in October, and Iran in 1979 when what had began as a rising against the Shah was transformed into an anointment of Ayatollah Khomeini. In Tunisia and Egypt the protesters were overwhelmingly young, secular and relatively liberal, and yet the main beneficiaries were Islamic parties. Partially down to the Muslim Brotherhood and other similar groupings having long dominated the underground opposition movement, it was also partially down to the usual failure of the left, liberals and secular groups in general to unite around a common party or figure. In the Egyptian presidential election the MB's Morsi faced off against five main candidates opposing him and the so-called "remnants", the end result being the inevitable run off between him and a former regime figure.

More broadly, it showcases the continuing disaster of the belief that leaderless organisations and campaigns are the future of political opposition. Facebook and Twitter may well have been instrumental in the initial success of the Arab spring; they've certainly helped Western journalists to report on the views of protesters, as well as spreading unverifiable propaganda. What those using social networking have not been able to do is put together a coherent message after the first, and relatively easiest part of the process of removing a tyrannical government from power has been achieved, let alone organise themselves to the extent of being able to win anything approaching power themselves. The most obvious example of this failure is rather closer to home: heard anything from what was Occupy LSX recently? Nope, thought not.

The end result has been only marginally less repressive forces than those which were initially ousted have taken control. Tunisia is probably slightly better off than it was under Ben Ali, and Ennahada might take decisive action against the Salafis should their demands for Sharia escalate further. Elsewhere, the picture's fairly bleak. Egypt could almost be back where it started, even if Mubarak is close to death; Libya is likely to effectively break up into constituent parts; Syria is between the rock of Assad and the hard place of the Free Syria Army; and Yemen and Bahrain are nowhere nearer true democracy than they were in December 2010. It really is too early to tell how the Arab spring will play out, but it's not exactly looking good.

Tuesday, March 06, 2012

Wading knee-deep through the jihadist media sewer.

I don't pay anywhere near as much attention as I once didto jihadist media. This is for a number of reasons: English sources for it have almost completely dried up, with the main site I used to find it on long gone; the insurgency in Iraq, similarly, essentially no longer exists, and so the insight the propaganda of the groups there provided into how the occupation was going and into jihadist strategy and thinking in general has likewise disappeared; the law has been tightened to such a ridiculous extent that the simple possession of one issue of Inspire magazine, the unintentionally hilarious in-house journal of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula can result in a 16-month prison sentence; and also, there are only so many videos of fireworks going off under vehicles supposedly occupied either by the Americans, the CIA or the collaborators while the person filming shouts "ALLAH AKBAR!" over and over you can watch.

From the very meagre access I now have to the videos emanating from these various groups, not all of whom are necessarily Salafist, I've noticed something rather curious. While the Arab spring has thoroughly discombobulated al-Qaida central, with both bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri imagining that it would be their victories against the Americans that would inspire the Arabs to rise up against their Western-backed rulers, rather than liberal and leftist campaigners who would quickly be joined by those across class, religious and political boundaries, other Salafists have turned to the ballot box where previously they eschewed it, most notably in Egypt.

What's so odd is that there doesn't seem to be any reason as to why jihadists would want to ally themselves, however briefly, with those yearning for the bad old days under Gaddafi rather than give the NTC a try. In Syria, the reasoning is obvious: Sunni Muslims being persecuted by a relatively small sect for demanding their rights, even if the situation has since changed fundamentally. The potential involvement of al-Qaida in Syria is worrying precisely because of the record of al-Qaida in Iraq, which quickly turned to sectarian bloodshed as a tactic, the ultimate aim being to drive the Americans out. In Syria this might hasten the fall of Assad, but at a massive cost for all involved. There is still then something to be learned from keeping an eye on jihadi propaganda, however bleak the world it promotes would be.

The thing is, Libya proves we have learned something from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Americans went into both countries with ourselves on their coattails saying that they wouldn't be engaging in something as sappy as nation building, only to change their minds once the initial fighting was over. With Libya, our politicians presented the NTC as ready to take charge the moment Gaddafi was hunted down, even when it seemed probable that it was just a temporary construct that would fall apart once its reason for coming together was over. With all the separate militias refusing during the war itself to work together, they were hardly likely to overcome their differences afterwards. Instead of involving ourselves in these fripperies, we just got the hell out as soon as we could declare mission accomplished. In Iraq and Afghanistan our use of conventional ground forces meant that when we broke it, we owned it; in Libya we just did the damage from the air, with the Libyans themselves owning the result.

Like Kosovo convinced Tony Blair that it was better to intervene than leave well alone, so it now seems that Libya has emboldened the next generation of leaders. It's true that this is less clear cut than it was back then: our failure to push harder for action against Syria proves that. It has though shoved the experience of Iraq further back into the collective memory, even while the "forgotten" war in Afghanistan continues. There simply isn't any other convincing explanation for why else we'd ever imagine that getting involved in Somalia would be anything like a good idea; for all the talk about the pirates based there and the potential threat posed by al-Shabaab, neither are truly crucial problems. The introduction of armed guards on shipping seems to have had a dramatic effect on the number of boats being seized, while the affiliation of al-Shabaab to al-Qaida seems more an act of desperation than one of strength. There is always a chance that some of those apparently travelling to Somalia to fight on the side of al-Shabaab may return and then decide to launch attacks here as is feared, but it seems far more probable that the camps in Pakistan will remain more attractive for those determined to bring the war home.

Tempting as it is to conclude that Somalia will remain a failed state, you can't help but hope that today's conference is a step towards stability. It is just that though, a step. One suspects that Amison and the transitional forces will continue to gain ground, but that as in Iraq and Afghanistan al-Shabaab will turn to typical guerilla tactics, and I fear, potentially even to the mass suicide attacks that the Islamic State of Iraq became infamous for. Despite Hillary Clinton today saying that air strikes wouldn't be a good idea, something more than slightly rich when the US has been carrying out drone attacks in the country as recently as last month, you also feel that we've reached one of those moments when the government is emboldened enough to imagine that they can't possibly make things any worse. And despite my sarky opening paragraph, such moments are always incredibly dangerous.

Syria though, as we must always point out, is not Libya, just as Libya was not Iraq or Afghanistan. As predictable as the veto by Russia and China was at the UN security council last weekend, and as pathetic as the synthetic outrage from ourselves and the Americans has been since, it's indisputable that the veto has emboldened Assad in ordering the assault on Homs. This wasn't though the only factor: equally ill-judged was the withdrawal of the Arab League monitors whose simple presence meant that the regime couldn't take the gloves off in the way it now has.

It is true that nothing in the proposed resolution would have allowed for anything remotely similar to the intervention in Libya. It was though nonetheless the first real opportunity for a protest by the Russians and Chinese on a resolution of a similar nature, and there doesn't seem to be anyone suggesting that it's Chinese interests in Syria that motivated their use of the veto, for the reason that they're relatively slight. Opinions similarly differ on how effective the resolution would have been had the Russian and Chinese abstained as they did on UNSC 1973; it would have done little other than endorse the peace plan proposed by the Arab League that Assad and his regime have already rejected with no sign of a reconsideration coming, with a UN sponsored observation of the planned ceasefire tacked on. It may well have influenced more in the army to defect, or persuaded one or two senior regime figures that the game was up as some decided in Libya, and also increased the regime's isolation; equally, it may have encouraged Assad to try and deliver a knock out blow to the resistance in the way he is doing now, before any further steps could be taken.

All this only underlines how few options we have for helping those who have risen against Assad. No one serious is advocating an intervention outside of UN auspices, and those suggesting Turkey might try its hand will be disappointed with how they have also ruled out military action. An insight into how some of those who go out on such limbs seem to have a distant relationship with reality is how Michael Weiss claims Syria has "only" 100,000 ground troops. Even if it's only half that number, taking into account defections and other wastage, that's still at least double the number Libya had. Syria can also rely as alluded to above on some support from Iran, especially when it comes to weaponry, with the country having more modern Russian equipment than the Soviet standard Libya had. There is also no safe buffer zone in Syria, as they at least admit, and it would be difficult to create one. Not impossible, but certainly difficult and with a potential cost in terms of lives considering the Syrian defences.

Similarly fraught with difficulty would be arming the Free Syrian Army, as Marc Lynch goes into great detail on. We know even less about the Syrian opposition than we did about the Libyan NTC, which basically means we know sweet F.A. It's rumoured that the Saudis and Qataris are already doing so, but the way the assault on Homs is going it seems doubtful whether those resisting can carry on doing so publicly for much longer. Longer term insurgency and guerilla warfare may well have to be resorted to.

Unpalatable as it is then, there is relatively little we can do other than up the diplomatic pressure and look to impose further sanctions, with the exception of encouraging the Arab League to continue its efforts to seek a transition. A beefed up observer mission could help to stop the bloodshed were it large enough, but this seems unlikely to be accepted.

Sadly, Syria has all the attributes which make an intervention near to impossible: a regime where most of the elite come from an ethnic minority that fears what would happen to it should the majority gain power; a large military with relatively modern equipment; an opposition without a strong base; a powerful ally well versed in putting down dissent and viscerally opposed to losing its friend; and no major natural resources that those intervening would potentially gain better access to. Unlike with democracies where pressure can come to bear on those launching limited wars, Israel eventually succumbing to it in both Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2009/10, dictatorships can hold out for far longer. Having also seen what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, Assad knows overwhelming force is now his best weapon. We will almost certainly have to get used to this feeling of impotence, such is our managed decline.

Thursday, December 01, 2011

No dog in this fight.

Change the metaphor and think of it like this. You see your neighbour's two-year-old daughter being savaged by his rottweiler. What do you do? If you are able to, you jump over the fence and beat the dog off with a stout stick, or shoot it with your gun. You may take a special interest in the little girl's future from then on, but she doesn't become your daughter, you don't "own" her. No more does the west "own" Libya just because it made a limited, justified intervention there.

Except this metaphor doesn't begin to represent the true picture of our intervention. If it did, then we wouldn't just be jumping over the fence to stop the dog, we'd then be demanding the child be put in care. If no action was then taken, we'd move onto killing the parent to protect the child.

The problem I continue to have over Libya is not about the rights and wrongs of the actual initial intervention, even though I still disagree with it, but because those who supported it seem to have no qualms whatsoever about how UNSC resolution 1973, which called for a ceasefire and negotiations as well as the no fly zone was then used to justify in the most extreme circumstances the bombing of Gaddafi's fleeing convoy, resulting ultimately in his execution. They also don't seem concerned that it has directly contributed to the lack of action over Syria, where over 4,000 are now known to have died in the uprising. It's only certain "dogs" that we're prepared to stop, as it has always been.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Stay classy Dominic Mohan!

Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what the men who pulled him out of the sewer were avenging, you bloodthirsty twats.

(Special mention must also go to the equally classy David Cameron, who in his brief appearance yesterday repeated the exact same litany first and only then mentioned the 40-year tyranny the Libyans endured. Still, it was all about protecting civilians and not long in coming revenge, wasn't it?)

Thursday, October 20, 2011

An oddly appropriate end.

There is much about the death of Gaddafi that seems oddly appropriate, both in terms of his own idiosyncratic, eccentric, brutal rule and the similarly fantastical, double-speak ridden coalition that came together to overthrow him. To the very last this incomprehensible man apparently carried with him a gold-plated gun, the kind of utterly debauched kitsch that only fictional gangsters and madmen along with probably quite real oligarchs and footballers would find aesthetically pleasing. It doesn't seem that he used it, or if he did the NTC certainly hasn't mentioned it; it would after all rather collide with the image of pulling him from out of a sewerage system like a rat, the same terms in which he repeatedly denounced those who had risen up against him, if he'd gone down fighting.

Instead he was given much the same treatment as Mussolini, although he has (so far) been spared the indignity of being hung upside down from a meathook. Certainly the account given by the NTC of his capture and subsequent death is confused and contradicted, not least by the various gruesome videos showing him alive and then later dead. If he did die in an ambulance as they're claiming, it's strange that there's footage of him alive being pulled off a truck, and then seemingly back on the same truck most definitely dead. Where the footage of him on the ground, also dead, comes in the chain remains to be seen. It's certainly possible that he died of his injuries shortly after being pulled off the truck, perhaps even in an ambulance, but it's hardly surprising there's suspicions that he was administered the coup de grace, with his body then being displayed and driven through the streets of Sirte. If that was what happened though it's difficult to believe there isn't video footage of the execution yet to emerge, seeing as everything else seems to have been filmed.

Like with so much else in this exasperating war, NATO had their own ignominious role to play. Gaddafi's convoy was apparently struck from the air, although the French and Americans are now squabbling over who exactly it was that so successfully protected any civilians playing chicken along the road from Sirte from an early grave. If you ever wanted a better indication of how rather than being a "liberal intervention" this was instead another war for regime change with at least some noble intentions then it's been provided by how today's strike will apparently be the last action of the campaign. Ever since the fall of Tripoli the only civilians in need of protection were those unfortunate enough to be living in the areas the last remaining loyalists fell back to, in Sirtre and Bani Walid respectively. Instead, NATO connived with the NTC forces to reduce Gaddafi's home town to rubble, regardless of the entirely innocent civilians living there. Rather than suggesting alternatives to their allies, they actively encouraged the Free Libya Forces to use the exact same artillery fire that Gaddafi's men showered Misrata with, to deadly and horrific effect. With Gaddafi dead, NATO's work is finished. If indeed he had managed to escape from Sirtre, it seems likely the mission would have continued until his death, such was the determination to continue to "protect civilians".

For the lessons of Iraq most certainly have been learned. Then the United States and the UK tried to pass a UN resolution authorising all necessary means in order to disarm the country of weapons of mass destruction by force. They failed because it was obvious the inspections had not been given enough time to succeed and as it was equally apparent regime change was the real motivation. This time, led by the UK and France, a resolution was sought that would put in place a no-fly zone and authorise all necessary means to protect civilians, while at the same time calling for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations. With a massacre in Benghazi otherwise looking imminent, it's not surprising that China and Russia fell into line despite their misgivings. UNSC Resolution 1973 has instead been used to justify absolutely anything NATO thought was appropriate to "protect civilians", essentially meaning the end of Gaddafi's government. Negotiations were rejected out of hand by the NTC, while any attempts to reach a ceasefire were negligible. The supposed "responsibility to protect" has been perhaps permanently sullied by this blatant deception. It's certainly ensured that Russia and China have blocked any attempts to pass sanction on Syria.

If there's been any regrets at this subterfuge, even if in the long run it may well turn out to be justified, then none have been expressed. David Cameron in the Commons on Wednesday returned once again to the "dodgy dossier" when listing a litany of abuses by the past government, at the same time as he's been presiding over a conflict based around very similar deceptions and lies. This though has been a good war, for the simple reason that not a single serviceman connected with NATO has perished, although this seems more by luck than judgement. The entire 8-month conflict has in the end turned out to have gone well for our politicians: so much could have gone wrong, from Gaddafi's men over-running Benghazi before operations began, to an intractable stalemate emerging, through to the fight for Tripoli turning into a complete bloodbath. A stalemate for a long time seemed to have prevailed, with the TNC's fighters being disorganised, almost suicidal in their tactics; even in Sirte they seemed determined to kill as many on their own side as they did loyalists. It's still not entirely clear how the fall of Tripoli came about, with accounts persisting about special forces from Qatar being heavily involved, having already provided weapons.Equally unclear is how many Libyans have lost their lives. Prior to the intervention anywhere between 1,000 and 6,000 were thought to have died; now the NTC suggests up to 40,000 have. Like in Iraq, no one seems to have been bothered enough to determine how many civilians were "protected" to death by NATO air-strikes. In Syria, where the repression if anything has been worse than it was in Libya prior to the intervention, around 3,000 are thought to have been killed. Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt, where the dictators stepped down but left behind their states, in Libya Gaddafi essentially was the state, leaving the NTC to restart from scratch. The difficulty of doing so will only be exacerbated by the tensions now increasing between the different factions of the rebels. Similarly, while there are always likely to be scores settled, the reports of torture and arrests are disturbing. The path to democracy for the country looks strewn with hazards.

Quite where this leaves any future intention to intervene is difficult to tell. Certainly, the other permanent UN security council members aren't going to fall for this "responsibility to protect" nonsense again unless genocide actually is happening. It's also even more abundantly clear to every dictator and authoritarian regime around the world that giving up your weapons of mass destruction is an act of lunacy. As Alex Massie says, it also instructs them that the best way to put down an uprising is brutal repression from the very beginning, before anyone has even the possibility of acting. At the same time, Flying Rodent more than has a point (as he has had throughout) when he suggests that not even a complete clusterfuck in Libya would stop our rulers from acting in the same way again. There was every possibility of Libya turning out as badly as Iraq, yet they went ahead anyway. This wasn't so much political courage as pure, unthinking arrogance, tempered only by how it was at least with some humanitarian instinct at its heart.

All this said, the true end of a dictatorial regime is always to be welcomed. The pure joy seen across Libya today at the knowledge that the person who terrorised them for so long has been removed entirely from the scene is something it can only be hoped is repeated with time in Syria, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Hopefully without the need for ourselves to bomb their leaders' departing convoys first.